One of the greatest challenges of running a business is finding the time to do everything that you want to do. Even after you prioritize your tasks, implement the KISS system and promise yourself not to check email every eight minutes, your day will still be limited to 24 hours.
One of the areas that usually suffers first is continuing education. Unless your line of work has mandatory continuing education requirements, many business owners don’t take the time to take classes and learn something new. Well here is your chance to change that.
Free online classes are booming
Prestigious Universities around the world are rapidly adopting OpenCourseWare (“OCW”) which is the online publication of their course materials without restrictions on access and for free. Several hundred universities currently participate in the OCW Consortium and are actively uploading their best lectures and courses. Recent studies indicate that enrollment does not suffer as a result of OCW so the trend is expected to continue.
As a summer project, I set out to find the most interesting and compelling finance and economics-related courses available online. Hundreds of websites later, I have compiled a list of 24 resources which are – in my opinion – the best in their respective areas. This is not an exhaustive list and I welcome reader opinions and other suggestions in the comments section.
Directory of free online finance and economics classes
In order to make this directory of “classes” as user friendly as possible, I only considered those that:
- Are truly free (no “free to try” or “freemium” classes);
- Don’t require any special software other than a recent browser with standard plugins and/or standard applications (PDF reader, MS Office, etc.) to use; and
- Come from reputable institutions and lecturers.
The classes are a mix of interviews, individual lectures and complete courses. The interviews are less than 10 minutes but packed with great take-aways. The individual lectures run from 1 to 2 hours and present specific topics relevant to business owners in a financial and economic context. The courses consist of multiple lectures, notes, homework assignments and projects. They will take many hours to complete but are the most rewarding given their depth.
Bookmark this page and use it as a resource to learn something new when you have some down time.
Go to the article: Online Finance Classes: Beef Up Your Skills and Get Relevant
